“American Idol” Season 13 winner Caleb Johnson will make his film debut in the psychological monster movie Remember.

The singer appears in the indie film’s prologue, which was filmed earlier this month in Greenville, South Carolina. Check out our exclusive photos from the shoot below.

Remember tells the story of a group of young people facing off against a monster that can erase its victims from the memories of the other characters, constantly reshaping the survivors’ personalities, relationships, and knowledge of the dangers around them.

“I’ve always been a monster movie kid, so when I heard about this opportunity, of course I said yes,” Johnson said. “Working with the cast and crew was an absolute blast. Really excited for everyone to see the film.”

Jeff Corpening and Betsy Pearl Cardwell co-direct from a script by Corpening and Evan Purcell. Johnson first met Cardwell in a film program when he was 15.

“The thing that set him apart from all the other students was his enthusiasm and excitement about filmmaking,” Cardwell recalls. “His passion was absolutely contagious. I just knew that he’d go far in his field. I wasn’t surprised that he found another creative talent, but I also knew that his love for movies would never die.”

“I was born and raised in Western North Carolina. This whole area holds a special place in my heart,” added Johnson. “It’s incredible to see how much everything has evolved since I was a kid. This area has really shaped who I am, and now that I get to work with local artists and filmmakers, it’s incredible.”

“To say we are happy about working with Caleb would be an understatement,” said Corpening. “The excitement he has for our film, and his love of horror films in general, has proven infectious to our whole team. I can’t wait to show everyone what he can do.

Remember will resume filming in the fall and is currently seeking additional investors and hiring local talent. Visit TheRememberFilm.com for more information.

Caleb Johnson as Father in ‘Remember’ via Corpening Media

‘Remember’ via Corpening Media

Carolyn Tkachenko as Young Tabitha in ‘Remember’ via Corpening Media

‘Remember’ via Corpening Media

Caleb Johnson with special makeup effects artist Sally Superville on the set of ‘Remember’ via Corpening Media

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Actor Topher Grace (“Black Mirror”, Predators) has officially joined Buddy, a unique horror movie from Too Many Cooks and Adult Swim Yule Log director Casper Kelly, per THR.

Grace joins previously announced star Emmy-nominated actor Cristin Milioti (“The Penguin”).

Naturally, plot details are being kept under wraps at this time, but it’s described as a “new experience in horror.” Kelly co-wrote the script with Jamie King, who previously worked on the Disney+ family movie World’s Best. Considering Kelly’s attachment, it feels safe to assume that Buddy will live up to its “unique” descriptor.

Topher Grace is best known as the squeaky clean lead in the sitcom “That ’70s Show” and as Eddie Brock in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, but has recently appeared in episodes of “The Twilight Zone” and “Love, Death, & Robots.” Most recently, the actor appeared in a brief cameo capacity in A24’s Heretic.

In addition to the mind-bending Adult Swim short “Too Many Cooks” and increasingly wild Yule Log and its sequel, Kelly also contributed the unforgettable “Cheddar Goblin” commercial inserted in Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy.

J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules are producing Buddy via their BoulderLight Pictures, the banner behind this year’s Companion and upcoming Weapons. Tyler Davidson and Drew Sykes are producing for Low Spark Films.

With production underway in Ohio, expect details to slowly begin to emerge. Stay tuned.

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It seems that David Cronenberg knew exactly the kinds of movies he wanted to make right from the start. His debut feature film, Shivers, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year, is filled with the hallmarks of classic Cronenberg. It deals in bodily invasion, the combination of the technological and biological, the tension between modern society and base instinct, and subversive explorations of sexuality. Any of these ideas taken alone fit right into genre, and especially exploitation film, but taken together, they form something new and truly unique, as if fused together through a mad teleportation experiment, and given the name of the auteur himself—Cronenbergian.

Body horror existed before Shivers in various forms including werewolves, body snatchers, and even aspects of the Frankenstein mythos, but Cronenberg’s approach was something modern and even revolutionary. His brand of body horror has been a massive influence on the genre over the years with his fingerprints visible on films as diverse as Night of the Creeps (1986) and Slither (2006)—both of which appear to have been directly inspired by Shivers; The Thing (1982) and Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989); all the way up to Together (2025), and many more. Even Dawn of the Dead (1978), 28 Days Later (2002) and other infection horrors have apparent influence from movies like Shivers and Cronenberg’s next film Rabid (1977).

To call Shivers Cronenberg’s feature debut is a bit misleading, but forgivable considering that he has called the film his first “real movie.” He had previously made two underground art films that qualify as feature length, Stereo (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970) as well as several short films, but these were made in a very DIY style. He went into Shivers knowing it would be something different. As he told William Beard and Piers Handling in a 1983 interview:

“I would have a crew that was paid for by a producer who was in it because he felt the film would make money and who had plans to distribute it. To me the difference was that I would no longer be shooting film myself. I would no longer be able to make it totally in private without any consideration whether they liked what I was doing or not. That was a big difference.”

Those producers turned out to be John Dunning and André Link of Cinepix, which Cronenberg described as the “New World Pictures [Roger Corman’s production company] of Canada.” Cinepix had been looking for a film that could be successful in the United States and felt that a low budget horror film would be the best way to achieve that success. Shivers fit the bill, though the producers hesitated at first as the very inexperienced Cronenberg insisted on directing.

Because of their hesitation, Cronenberg expected to have to make the film in the United States and even presented his script to various Hollywood studios including New World, who told him they would absolutely be interested in making the picture. Cronenberg, however, did not particularly like the Hollywood atmosphere and was very happy to hear that Dunning and Link decided to greenlight the film and had secured financing from the Canadian Film Development Corporation, now called Telefilm. Even this was a challenge as there was no real history of genre filmmaking in Canada at the time and the Canadian government was hesitant to use taxpayer money for such a venture as Shivers. Fortunately Dunning and Link were successful, and the film ended up making a profit for Telefilm and the Canadian taxpayer.

When pre-production began, Cronenberg quickly realized how little he knew about feature filmmaking, even for such a modestly budgeted film as Shivers. He credits Cinepix and especially John Dunning for his on-the-job training. “You couldn’t have a better film school,” he later said, “It was fantastic, and I learned so much from those guys.” Also in his corner was Cronenberg’s on-the-set line producer Ivan Reitman, who would achieve great success as a writer, producer, and director in his own right. When Shivers was complete, Dunning and Link had their film that could be distributed in the U.S. It was retitled They Came from Within, something of a misleading title considering the nature of the film’s parasites, but it garnered some success in the States as well.

Shivers includes many of the aspects that have been associated with Cronenberg throughout his career. Right from the start the film makes clear that it is a commentary on the nature of modern society, as exemplified by the introduction of the setting, Starliner Tower, a state-of-the-art apartment building boasting everything a modern human could want. It is the epitome of comfort and convenience with spacious rooms, on-site medical and dental facilities, and sources of food and entertainment. There is practically no need to ever leave or even interact with anyone unless absolutely necessary. It is also clear that Starliner Tower is cold and clinical, a stoic monolith with no character, feeling, or soul. The tower itself is a reflection of what modern humanity has become. In the world of Shivers, humans have become anything but human, simply empty shells who have shed the base instincts that have allowed them to survive for millennia. Now they merely wander through life with little real purpose. Humanity is a numb, dull reflection of what it could be.

Into this sterile world, an element of chaos is injected—a parasite that draws out the base instincts of whomever they infect. What is unique, and brings up another Cronenbergian theme, is that the parasite is manmade, created in a lab by Dr. Emil Hobbes (Fred Döderlein). So, in essence, they did not “come from within” but were created by a mad scientist and placed into someone—but “They Came from a Lab” isn’t much of a title. In the middle of the film, researcher Rollo (Joe Silver) explains Hobbes’s theories to Roger (Paul Hampton), the character as close to a hero as the film has. “Man is an animal that thinks too much, an over rational animal that’s lost touch with its body and its instincts,” which led Hobbes to create the parasite that is “a combination of aphrodisiac and venereal disease that will hopefully turn the world into one beautiful, mindless orgy,” alluding to Cronenberg’s original title for Shivers: “Orgy of the Blood Parasites.”

The various ways in which the parasites spread is where most of the horror, and frankly fun, of the movie comes from. In one scene Allan Kolman as Nicholas Tudor is seen talking to the creature inside him saying, “we’re going to be good friends,” as it burrows just beneath his skin. Shivers is also a very early film to employ “bladder” effects, a process generally thought to have been innovated by the legendary Dick Smith in which bladders, such as shaped ballons or (as was the case on Shivers) condoms, are inflated and deflated beneath a layer of foam latex to give the illusion of something moving beneath or misshaping skin. The sequence with Nick is absolutely chilling as it is clear that not only his body, but his mind is being taken over by the creature. This invasion is key to Cronenberg’s work as the foreign entity or contaminant is evocative of disease, especially cancer, which has been an element of his work all the way up to his most recent film, The Shrouds (2025).

The release of base instinct is almost always manifested in the form of sexuality in Shivers with just a few exceptions. The first person we see, beyond the original host, infected with the parasite calls out to her victim “I’m hungry for love!” In one of the film’s best scenes, Nurse Forsythe (Lynn Lowry) lays out the thesis not only for Shivers but for much of Cronenberg’s filmography in what has become an iconic monologue about a dream she had in which an older man tells her:

“Everything is erotic…everything is sexual…He tells me that even old flesh is erotic flesh, that disease is the love of two alien kinds of creatures for each other. That even dying is an act of eroticism, that talking is sexual, that breathing is sexual, that even to physically exist is sexual.”

This can be expanded to other films as well. Videodrome (1983): “television and media are sexual.” The Fly (1986): “scientific discovery is sexual.” Dead Ringers (1988) and Crimes of the Future (2022): “surgery is sexual.” Naked Lunch (1991): “writing is sexual.” Crash (1996): “cars and car crashes are sexual.” eXistenZ (1999): “playing video games is sexual.” You get the picture. Even in the afore mentioned recent effort The Shrouds, Cronenberg explores the ideas that amputation in life and even decomposition after death are sexual human experiences. By the end of Shivers, the inhabitants of Starliner Tower become sexual zombies. The film (ahem) climaxes in an orgiastic pool scene in which Roger, the final holdout, finally succumbs to the animalistic instincts of the parasites at the hands and lips Nurse Forsythe with a little help from the great Barbara Steele, whose infection scene in a bathtub is one of the film’s most memorable moments.

That this film includes so many hallmarks of his later work is not to say that Cronenberg came right out of the gate fully formed. Shivers lacks the aesthetic polish of his later films, and the ideas that have preoccupied him over the years have become more refined as he has continued to express them in more complex and nuanced ways. This is especially true in his fearless portrayals of sex, which have garnered more than a few harsh criticisms over the years. The complexities of his movies have often disturbed audiences, as indicated by the rousing boos Crash received at its Cannes Film Festival premiere.

But one of Cronenberg’s greatest assets as a filmmaker is his fearlessness. He has never been afraid to provoke, to disturb, and to probe into the deepest aspects of the things that make us truly human. For him, it often comes down to the very basest things. He reminds us that we occupy vessels that will decay and expire, be it naturally or through some process of disease or technological intervention. Cronenberg knows this well, but also conveys that the fact that this will all end is the best motivation to truly live and explore all the fullness of our humanity. He knows very well that we are preoccupied with sex and death and his explorations of these base fixations is why Cronenberg’s work has continued to burrow under our skin and into our minds for five decades.

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A new trailer has arrived for action fantasy blockbuster Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy, the number one movie at the Korean box office, ahead of its North American theatrical release.

The film will open in theaters nationwide tomorrow, August 1, 2025, one week after it premiered in Korea.

In the fantasy apocalypse feature, “Kim Dokja (Ahn Hyo-seop), an ordinary man in his 20s, is the only reader of an obscure web novel titled ‘Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse.’ After having read the last chapter, the novel suddenly becomes reality, and its omnipotent hero, Yu Junghyeok (Lee Min-ho), appears before Kim. As the only person who knows how to survive in this world, Kim and his companions strive to save the world by writing their own new ending.”

The blockbuster stars AHN Hyo-seop (Business Proposal, Dr. Romantic), LEE Min-ho (Panchinko, The King: Eternal Monarch), CHAE Soo-bin (The Rebel, I’m Not a Robot),  SHIN Seung-ho (A-Teen, Alchemy of Souls), NANA (K-pop groups After School, Orange Caramel), and the most-followed Korean actress on Instagram, JISOO from the global sensation K-pop group BLACKPINK, in her first leading role in a film. 

Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy is directed by KIM Byung-woo (The Terror Live, Take Point), who also cowrote the screenplay with LEE Jung-min.

It’s based on the popular WEBTOON Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, alternatively translated as “Omniscient Reader” (Korean: 전지적 독자 시점; RR: Jeonjijeok Dokja Sijeom), written by the duo singNsong.The web novel has a catchy premise: a fictional world becoming reality. It’s described as an “epic narrative, spanning 551 chapters, masterfully blends metafictional elements, a game-like worldview, and profound character development, offering a philosophical exploration of what it means to be a ‘reader,’ ‘protagonist,‘ and ‘story.”

The original web novel concluded its main serialization in February 2020 and has continued to expand its universe with an ongoing epilogue series since February 2023.

Check out the trailer below, which introduces a variety of monsters in an apocalyptic scenario, ahead of the film’s release tomorrow.

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There’s just something about a cursed doll movie.

Japanese writer/director Shinobu Yaguchi’s entry in the sub genre, Dollhouse (2025), doesn’t reinvent the wheel so much as play around with the conventions and audience expectations. Yaguchi, who is best known for his comedies, manages to integrate funny moments into the film, which is mostly successful at balancing its diverse tones. If anything the infusion of comedy and the sly wink-wink, nudge-nudge moments are what help the film stand out from its contemporaries.

When Yoshie Suzuki (Masami Nagasawa) is left minding daughter Mei’s (Totoka Honda) pre-teen friends, she leaves the girls alone to quickly bike to the store for snacks. Not unlike a Final Destination film, the red flags immediately begin to pop up: there’s a strange man she spots walking down the street and other women are gossiping about whether he’s dangerous at the store. Even more significantly, Yoshie purposefully checked and removed all of the dangerous items around the house before she left. 

What the young mother doesn’t account for, though, is that the girls would play hide and seek and that all of the good/obvious spots would be taken…except for the washing machine.

Flash forward one year and Yoshie is still grieving the loss of her daughter. She’s a shell of herself and the house is full of reminders: we literally see Yoshie washing clothes by hand before the telltale vacancy where the washer once stood. Even that is not enough, though; Yoshie and her doctor husband Tadahiko (Kôji Seto) have begun packing up the house to move.  

It sees like fate, then, when Yoshie chases an advertisement for doll cremation into an antique street fair and stumbles upon a beautiful lifelike doll in a glass cage.

When she takes it home, dresses it up in Mei’s clothes and cuts its hair to suit, Tadahiko is taken aback, but the grief counsellor she’s been seeing encourages them both to embrace doll therapy (see also: the premise of M. Night Shyamalan-produced Apple TV series Servant).

Yaguchi gets good comedy mileage out of not only Tadahiko’s reaction to the doll, but also the way the house once again changes to reflect the changes in the family. As the doll becomes a surrogate daughter in Mei’s wake, the wall of family pictures switches to photos of the couple and the doll. 

Then another change: Yoshie finds herself pregnant with a new baby and suddenly the doll becomes relegated to the sidelines, tossed aside and buried in the back of the closet in favour of the real thing. A five year jump introduces child number two, a daughter named Mai (Aoi Ikemura). When the doll is rediscovered by the little girl, it is dusted off, given the name Anya and quickly becomes Mai’s most cherished possession…albeit one that she converses with and who occasionally hurts her and other girls.

The remainder of the first and second act detail the weird stuff that happens around Aya. With Yoshie “recovered” from her grief, Tadahiko is back at work at the hospital and barely present. For this portion of the film, Dollhouse turns into a women’s picture as the housewife struggles with her suspicions that the doll is alive while everyone else wonders if she’s going mad.

The supernatural stuff plays in familiar territory, with the doll appearing in unexpected places, seemingly running around of its own accord, and miraculously reappearing despite Yoshie’s best attempts to get rid of it. Not unlike Child’s Play/Chucky movies, Aya’s movements require a child actor standing in for the doll as it runs around in the foreground or background.

Thankfully both Tadahiko and his mother are brought into the believer’s fold after their own encounters with Aya, including one funny interaction at grandma’s house involving a closet and a robot cleaner, and another involving an act of violence on a bridge that is captured on CCTV. 

Once everyone is in agreement that the doll is cursed, the remainder of the film circles around how to dispose of it while also exploring its mythology. Much of this is funny and/or intriguing, but Yaguchi’s efforts to include a bit of everything does chip away at the pacing and draw the film out needlessly. 

A YouTube video featuring a group of overly excited young paranormal investigators called Occult Rangers is amusing, but only slightly relevant to the plot. A man with ulterior motives who offers to cremate the doll is amusing and subversive, but makes the arrival of a helpful priest, Kanda (Tetsushi Tanaka), feel repetitive. A lengthy island-set climax with multiple setbacks and “surprises” feels overly drawn out, particularly for a film with only one death (Mei’s) and a runtime just short of two hours. 

Despite this, Dollhouse is a fun slice of cursed object entertainment. The doll’s design is beautiful and creepy, and even if many of the movie’s set pieces aren’t scary, they’re staged in exciting ways. 

For audiences who enjoy their scary doll movies with a healthy dose of sly wit, silliness, and subversion, Dollhouse is worth playing with.

Dollhouse played at Fantasia International Film Festival.

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